That it runs TF2 well isn't saying much. That wasn't very intense when it came out and it is very old. TF2 runs great on integrated Intel cards. Try a game that is a heavier hitter, and uses more modern API calls. Then you'll see issues.
Se what you are really saying is "A problem can be fixed by throwing enough hardware at it." Your GPU and CPU are unimaginably powerful compared to what was available in 2007. So of course it runs well, it could be running at 25% efficiency and still run well because your monitor's scan rate is the limiting factor.
However that's not so easy to do with new games that push the envelope. You can't just throw tons of hardware at them because they are already pushing the high end hardware that is out. So efficiency matters. If the driver is slow, you are going to have poor performance.
Further there is the issue of crashing. AMD drivers seem to have a tendency to 'asplode when you start throwing some of the new features at them. These features are there for a reason, they allow greater detail, more efficient rendering, new visuals, etc. If you can't support them, then that's an issue.
If you want a real test, fire up Metro Last Light Redux, see how that works.
"Oh that's an old version, we aren't going to patch the bug." Really? That's an acceptable response that something that's 3 years old is too old to patch? But somehow, taking 100 days to patch a product that's 5 years old (in 7's case) is too long? Much easier to deal with patch issues if you just declare you only support the latest greatest and require everyone to upgrade all the time, no matter the issues.
MS's response is particularly understandable given the complexity of doing regression testing on the wide variety of hardware, software, and patch sets the patch might need to be applied against. If they released it and it caused issues, well then people would cry even more about how shitty they were for not testing it.
I think you are right about the mud slinging/political office: What with Chrome books Google now wishes to directly attack MS. They want to make Windows look bad, and thus make their own product look good by comparison. This isn't motivated by being a good citizen, it is motivated by something else.
For that matter one can get all conspiracy theorist and say maybe they chose their reporting date knowing MS's patch cycle to try and create just such a situation.
Aldrin is a hero, the hoaxer is a very annoying moron. While technically that shouldn't matter, justice should be truly blind, it isn't. Nobody wanted to find Aldrin guilty of any wrong doing, so any plausible explanation was taken to make sure he got off.
I'm talking about large pension plans. My employer (a university) has one of those. It is mandatory, they simply withhold part of your salary (and match it dollar for dollar) as a condition of your employment. If you work to retirement, it then pays out a defined benefit monthly, which is taxable. If you do not, you can roll it over to an IRA or other account, which can vary int terms of tax liability.
However while you work there, you don't report it, other than a check box that says you are participating in an employer retirement program. You have no access to the money, there's no provision for loans or anything, so it does not count as a gain of any sort. So even though you are having a sizable chunk invested on your behalf (12% of your salary matched so 24% total) it doesn't count as an investment that would need any schedule of reporting because you aren't actually investing it, just paying in to a defined benefit plan.
What I mean is some places still offer defined benefit pensions. Those are investments, but they don't count as a normal investment does for tax purposes. You don't report on them or their value since you have no access to the money during your term of employment. So no need for a form for that.
Not what they should be doing, but the IRS doesn't seem to care much to go after people for it. I can see it too, given that usually you'd end up close to even. While the money you charge is income, you can deduct the space used, expenses, etc, etc. As such I doubt there is a lot of extra taxes to be had for people with roommates and so the IRS doesn't do much in the way of enforcement.
I haven't used their equivalent of the deluxe version, but the standard one has worked well for me for quite a few years and costs less than Turbo Tax.
What would Slashdot be saying if MS discontinued Windows 8 patches because 8.1 is now out? A reasonable support lifecycle is something that isn't too much to expect out of modern OS. It should be defined at OS inception.
Part of doing good science is being exceedingly critical of your own work. Feynman put it very well "I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen." So if he is so sure he is right, and so fragile about it, that he files a lawsuit when someone questions it, that is a bad sign. That means he's not thinking critically about it. A critical thinker would consider the arguments put forward. They might well decide they are all crap, but they wouldn't file a lawsuit to try and shut someone up.
Also this is the precise behaviour you see out of scammers. They shout down and try to use the legal system to bully critics. They know their work cannot stand up to criticism so they try to silence it with a big stick. I'm not saying that is what Mann is doing, but you do have to understand how it looks.
Needs to be thought about for the police too. They are people, and most people are not happy about being watched all the time. I mean think if you had a camera on you that recorded video and audio all day, every day at work. Might you feel a bit uncomfortable? I mean what if you and a coworker are sitting in the break room, complaining, as people do, and later your boss decides to look over the footage because he can and then fires you for it?
So there are reasons to try and find a balance. One thing that could help is a pre-roll system. Security systems do that these days, they'll continuously loop the last 30 seconds or whatever of footage in a buffer and then when an event happens (motion, alarm, etc) they'll commit that to disk and continue recording from there.
Could do the same here. Have a buffer, probably more like a 5-10 minute one, and then commit that when a recording event starts. Recording events could be triggered by things like cruiser lights getting activated, taser/firearm discharge, noise above a certain threshold, manual officer triggering, and so on.
Then you get to see what happened in the immediate leadup to the trigger as well as the aftermath. Privacy at other times is maintained as it isn't recording all the time.
Something that held back PCIe 3 support in many high end systems was the X79 chipset. If you want an E series, Intel's ultra high end desktop, processor, you have to use a different chipset. They don't rev that every generation though. So The X79 came out with the Sandy Bridge-E processors, and then the Ivy Bridge-E runs on the same thing.
There is a new chipset now, the X99, that works with the Haswell-E, but that just launched a few months ago.
Also with the high end processors, they are out of cycle with the normal ones. So the Haswell CPUs launched a good while ago, but the Haswell-E only launched now as Broadwell is launching.
Hence you can have a situation where for things like PCIe and USB the high end stuff is behind.
The new ART compiler that replaces Davilk may be more efficient and fast, but it has some compatibility issues. There are a number of programs that'll run on Davilk but not ART. Some of them warn you on the play store to set 4.4 to use Davilk (since you had a choice there). Well, 5 is ART only so no go there unless the programs upgrade.
I have two devices, one on 5.0.1, one on 4.4.2. Why? Not because I'm slowly upgrading or testing, but because that's all I can have. My nVidia Shield got 5 a could weeks after it launched from Google. It popped up an OTA update and I took it.
However my Note 3, no update is available. I can't update it to 5 without rooting it and putting on some unofficial ROM. Samsung hasn't released an update to my carrier and even once they do, who knows how long it'll take my carrier to release it to me.
That's the thing: Mobile upgrades aren't like desktop upgrades. When Microsoft or Redhat releases a new OS, you can upgrade right then. Nothing stops you from getting the latest upgrade and doing it day 1. Well no such luck on a mobile. It has to get released for your device. That means that your device manufacturer first has to release the update, which can take awhile depending on who they are and how much they screw with it. For some devices that is all, but for most that are phones it doesn't go to you, it goes to the carriers. They then have to customize and so on and decide when they want to release it. that can again take time.
So it can be many months to get an update. Sometimes it doesn't get released for your device at all, but even if it does, it can be 3-6 months or more before you have the option.
Intel really goes all in on R&D. It isn't just that they make a lot of money, their percentage of R&D investment is very high, and they don't cut it in down times to try and squeeze out numbers. That snowballs in the long term and is why they had a 14nm process running when others were still struggling to finalize their 20nm.
Also a lot of the architectural arguments regarding Motorola v Intel were bogus. It was programmers arguing on academic issues that maybe theoretically should matter, but didn't actually make a different performance wise in final implementation. Little endian would be a good example. Plenty of people act like that is a hugely bad choice, yet it actually matters fuck all.
They only have one 14nm fab right now, and it only makes Intel chips. Maybe they'd sell some 22nm, I dunno, and that might be of interest for a GPU, but they aren't selling 14nm at this time near as I know.
Current videocards work great. You can play all kinds of games in plenty of beautiful detail. So to get someone to buy a new video card, well you have to offer them a reason. If your new card isn't enough faster, or more efficient, or enough new features, or whatever then people will say "Nah, I'm good," and stick with what they got.
So they do have a need to move forward on tech, if they want to stick around.
While a thin device is nice, we've already gotten past the "don't care" point, as you note. My Samsung Note 3 makes me perfectly happy, doesn't need to be any thinner. And it has a removable cover so I can replace the battery. I'll take a slightly thicker device if it means I can get at the battery, since that dies long before the rest.
Time was they were trend setters. While the iPhone wasn't the first smart phone, by a long shot, it was the first one that got real regular consumer popularity. Also while the iPad didn't invent tablets, it made tablets something to own and defined what they'd be.
However now they are getting beat on features left right and center. That amazin' new iPhone 6+? Ya it's 2011 calling, something about a "Galaxy Note". Samsung was rolling out their 4th generation large screen phone by the time Apple decided one was good to make. Apple can't claim to be a mobile leader anymore. They are a player for sure, but others are being first to market with new features.
Never mind design flaws that were made for aesthetics (the antenna that failed when you grabbed it, the 6+'s bending too easily, etc).
They are all about making shiny, fashionable, devices and charging a massive premium for them. That's fine, I guess, if that's what you like, but don't try and sell it as something amazing.
Same deal with physical evidence. As an individual, you generally have no records retention requirements. You are welcome to destroy your stuff as pleases you. So you can shred bills, old receipts, etc as soon as you want. None of this is destruction of evidence if you get sued. When it changes is if you get sued, and you are told to keep things, and you then destroy it. Then you are in trouble. So if a court case happens, the court can, and will, say "You need to keep anything related to this around in case we want to see it." But just in your everyday life you can wipe drives, shred documents, etc as you please.
This can be a little difference if we are talking something related to a business, there are more records retention requirements for various businesses, but again it has to be something where there is a legal requirement to retain it.
The only other case would be if something goes against policy. If a business has a policy that all old harddrives are kept in storage for 10 years before being destroyed, that's not legally required but they can do it anyhow. However if a lawsuit happens and the one harddrive that was asked for just so happened to be sent off to be destroyed immediately, against the business' own policy, well then that could be trouble.
You don't have to retain everything for all time just in case someone wants it for a lawsuit. However if you have something, and a court says it is evidence, you then have to retain it until the court is done with it.
If it is actually "close to the core" like AMD claims, then it is something that'll only work on their GCN hardware, and when they change that, it'll stop working. Realistically they are probably lying and it is just another API, particularly since game performance has been very mixed, being only slightly faster at best and slower occasionally.
If you bench one of the few games that do both DX and GL on Windows (like Earth 2150 or something) you find that the program will run at equal speeds on nVidia drivers. nVidia has declared both DX and GL to be native APIs and they both have first flight support. Then you try it on AMD an you find GL running slower. This is never mind feature issues, crashing or anything else.
AMD just doesn't do well for OpenGL. I dunno why they haven't fixed it, but it is a real issue. Most gamers don't care since not a lot of games use OpenGL on Windows, but it is a real issue. Of course for an OS that uses OpenGL as its only 3D API, it'll be a big issue.
An open source project can have as few as just one set. There are some projects that nobody other than the developer ever contributes to. Just one guy occasionally working on some little project that some people use. Those all those people COULD look at the code, they don't.
Likewise commercial firms can, and sometimes do, pay many people to look at the code. In addition to having a big development staff they can have dedicated QA staffs. They can have a person, or many people, who's job it is literally to sit and look over the code for security issues every single day.
You are buying in to the same fallacy that the article is talking about: That because something is open is just means that more people MUST be looking at it. No it means people can look at it, but they may choose not to.
PCs usually get at least some use for more "necessary" things. Financial stuff is frequently done on a computer, a lot of renewal/registration type of things are done on a computer. Sending e-mail is usually done on a computer (much easier with a keyboard than a tablet), etc. Then of course there are people who use them for work. You can argue if it is a good idea or not, but many people use computers to do some work from home.
One can get by without a computer in the home, but it is becoming more difficult. You end up having to go more out of your way to do various daily things that have moved to the Internet. Now none of this is difficult, it doesn't require a high end system, but having a computer does make it much easier.
A tablet works as a replacement for most things, of course, but that doesn't mean it is as easy. Content creation, even simple things like e-mail, is much more laborious on a tablet than on a computer. Also most people already have computers, and usually smartphones which can do everything a tablet can.
Hence tablets really end up slotting in to the toy category for most. If you went all utilitarian about it, just a smartphone would probably be all they needed, but we aren't a country of utilitarianism, but of convenience. So they have a computer (maybe more than one) a smartphone, and then get a tablet too.
I mean some people have a genuine need/use for a tablet however for most it is just a toy. They don't get it to replace a desktop and/or laptop, idiot tech journalist stories to the contrary, they get it in addition. It gets used for playing around, surfing the web on the couch, watching Netflix in bed, etc. It is just a toy. Nothing wrong with that, toys are fun, I have a tablet just for use as a toy. However that also makes it something not high up on the upgrade list. If all you are doing is some basic noodling around and nothing on it is important, then it isn't a big target to upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
That it runs TF2 well isn't saying much. That wasn't very intense when it came out and it is very old. TF2 runs great on integrated Intel cards. Try a game that is a heavier hitter, and uses more modern API calls. Then you'll see issues.
Se what you are really saying is "A problem can be fixed by throwing enough hardware at it." Your GPU and CPU are unimaginably powerful compared to what was available in 2007. So of course it runs well, it could be running at 25% efficiency and still run well because your monitor's scan rate is the limiting factor.
However that's not so easy to do with new games that push the envelope. You can't just throw tons of hardware at them because they are already pushing the high end hardware that is out. So efficiency matters. If the driver is slow, you are going to have poor performance.
Further there is the issue of crashing. AMD drivers seem to have a tendency to 'asplode when you start throwing some of the new features at them. These features are there for a reason, they allow greater detail, more efficient rendering, new visuals, etc. If you can't support them, then that's an issue.
If you want a real test, fire up Metro Last Light Redux, see how that works.
"Oh that's an old version, we aren't going to patch the bug." Really? That's an acceptable response that something that's 3 years old is too old to patch? But somehow, taking 100 days to patch a product that's 5 years old (in 7's case) is too long? Much easier to deal with patch issues if you just declare you only support the latest greatest and require everyone to upgrade all the time, no matter the issues.
MS's response is particularly understandable given the complexity of doing regression testing on the wide variety of hardware, software, and patch sets the patch might need to be applied against. If they released it and it caused issues, well then people would cry even more about how shitty they were for not testing it.
I think you are right about the mud slinging/political office: What with Chrome books Google now wishes to directly attack MS. They want to make Windows look bad, and thus make their own product look good by comparison. This isn't motivated by being a good citizen, it is motivated by something else.
For that matter one can get all conspiracy theorist and say maybe they chose their reporting date knowing MS's patch cycle to try and create just such a situation.
Aldrin is a hero, the hoaxer is a very annoying moron. While technically that shouldn't matter, justice should be truly blind, it isn't. Nobody wanted to find Aldrin guilty of any wrong doing, so any plausible explanation was taken to make sure he got off.
I'm talking about large pension plans. My employer (a university) has one of those. It is mandatory, they simply withhold part of your salary (and match it dollar for dollar) as a condition of your employment. If you work to retirement, it then pays out a defined benefit monthly, which is taxable. If you do not, you can roll it over to an IRA or other account, which can vary int terms of tax liability.
However while you work there, you don't report it, other than a check box that says you are participating in an employer retirement program. You have no access to the money, there's no provision for loans or anything, so it does not count as a gain of any sort. So even though you are having a sizable chunk invested on your behalf (12% of your salary matched so 24% total) it doesn't count as an investment that would need any schedule of reporting because you aren't actually investing it, just paying in to a defined benefit plan.
Ya it looks like a good choice as well. Either of them are cheaper and better than Turbotax :P.
What I mean is some places still offer defined benefit pensions. Those are investments, but they don't count as a normal investment does for tax purposes. You don't report on them or their value since you have no access to the money during your term of employment. So no need for a form for that.
Not what they should be doing, but the IRS doesn't seem to care much to go after people for it. I can see it too, given that usually you'd end up close to even. While the money you charge is income, you can deduct the space used, expenses, etc, etc. As such I doubt there is a lot of extra taxes to be had for people with roommates and so the IRS doesn't do much in the way of enforcement.
I haven't used their equivalent of the deluxe version, but the standard one has worked well for me for quite a few years and costs less than Turbo Tax.
What would Slashdot be saying if MS discontinued Windows 8 patches because 8.1 is now out? A reasonable support lifecycle is something that isn't too much to expect out of modern OS. It should be defined at OS inception.
Part of doing good science is being exceedingly critical of your own work. Feynman put it very well "I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen." So if he is so sure he is right, and so fragile about it, that he files a lawsuit when someone questions it, that is a bad sign. That means he's not thinking critically about it. A critical thinker would consider the arguments put forward. They might well decide they are all crap, but they wouldn't file a lawsuit to try and shut someone up.
Also this is the precise behaviour you see out of scammers. They shout down and try to use the legal system to bully critics. They know their work cannot stand up to criticism so they try to silence it with a big stick. I'm not saying that is what Mann is doing, but you do have to understand how it looks.
Needs to be thought about for the police too. They are people, and most people are not happy about being watched all the time. I mean think if you had a camera on you that recorded video and audio all day, every day at work. Might you feel a bit uncomfortable? I mean what if you and a coworker are sitting in the break room, complaining, as people do, and later your boss decides to look over the footage because he can and then fires you for it?
So there are reasons to try and find a balance. One thing that could help is a pre-roll system. Security systems do that these days, they'll continuously loop the last 30 seconds or whatever of footage in a buffer and then when an event happens (motion, alarm, etc) they'll commit that to disk and continue recording from there.
Could do the same here. Have a buffer, probably more like a 5-10 minute one, and then commit that when a recording event starts. Recording events could be triggered by things like cruiser lights getting activated, taser/firearm discharge, noise above a certain threshold, manual officer triggering, and so on.
Then you get to see what happened in the immediate leadup to the trigger as well as the aftermath. Privacy at other times is maintained as it isn't recording all the time.
Something that held back PCIe 3 support in many high end systems was the X79 chipset. If you want an E series, Intel's ultra high end desktop, processor, you have to use a different chipset. They don't rev that every generation though. So The X79 came out with the Sandy Bridge-E processors, and then the Ivy Bridge-E runs on the same thing.
There is a new chipset now, the X99, that works with the Haswell-E, but that just launched a few months ago.
Also with the high end processors, they are out of cycle with the normal ones. So the Haswell CPUs launched a good while ago, but the Haswell-E only launched now as Broadwell is launching.
Hence you can have a situation where for things like PCIe and USB the high end stuff is behind.
The new ART compiler that replaces Davilk may be more efficient and fast, but it has some compatibility issues. There are a number of programs that'll run on Davilk but not ART. Some of them warn you on the play store to set 4.4 to use Davilk (since you had a choice there). Well, 5 is ART only so no go there unless the programs upgrade.
I have two devices, one on 5.0.1, one on 4.4.2. Why? Not because I'm slowly upgrading or testing, but because that's all I can have. My nVidia Shield got 5 a could weeks after it launched from Google. It popped up an OTA update and I took it.
However my Note 3, no update is available. I can't update it to 5 without rooting it and putting on some unofficial ROM. Samsung hasn't released an update to my carrier and even once they do, who knows how long it'll take my carrier to release it to me.
That's the thing: Mobile upgrades aren't like desktop upgrades. When Microsoft or Redhat releases a new OS, you can upgrade right then. Nothing stops you from getting the latest upgrade and doing it day 1. Well no such luck on a mobile. It has to get released for your device. That means that your device manufacturer first has to release the update, which can take awhile depending on who they are and how much they screw with it. For some devices that is all, but for most that are phones it doesn't go to you, it goes to the carriers. They then have to customize and so on and decide when they want to release it. that can again take time.
So it can be many months to get an update. Sometimes it doesn't get released for your device at all, but even if it does, it can be 3-6 months or more before you have the option.
Intel really goes all in on R&D. It isn't just that they make a lot of money, their percentage of R&D investment is very high, and they don't cut it in down times to try and squeeze out numbers. That snowballs in the long term and is why they had a 14nm process running when others were still struggling to finalize their 20nm.
Also a lot of the architectural arguments regarding Motorola v Intel were bogus. It was programmers arguing on academic issues that maybe theoretically should matter, but didn't actually make a different performance wise in final implementation. Little endian would be a good example. Plenty of people act like that is a hugely bad choice, yet it actually matters fuck all.
They only have one 14nm fab right now, and it only makes Intel chips. Maybe they'd sell some 22nm, I dunno, and that might be of interest for a GPU, but they aren't selling 14nm at this time near as I know.
Current videocards work great. You can play all kinds of games in plenty of beautiful detail. So to get someone to buy a new video card, well you have to offer them a reason. If your new card isn't enough faster, or more efficient, or enough new features, or whatever then people will say "Nah, I'm good," and stick with what they got.
So they do have a need to move forward on tech, if they want to stick around.
While a thin device is nice, we've already gotten past the "don't care" point, as you note. My Samsung Note 3 makes me perfectly happy, doesn't need to be any thinner. And it has a removable cover so I can replace the battery. I'll take a slightly thicker device if it means I can get at the battery, since that dies long before the rest.
Time was they were trend setters. While the iPhone wasn't the first smart phone, by a long shot, it was the first one that got real regular consumer popularity. Also while the iPad didn't invent tablets, it made tablets something to own and defined what they'd be.
However now they are getting beat on features left right and center. That amazin' new iPhone 6+? Ya it's 2011 calling, something about a "Galaxy Note". Samsung was rolling out their 4th generation large screen phone by the time Apple decided one was good to make. Apple can't claim to be a mobile leader anymore. They are a player for sure, but others are being first to market with new features.
Never mind design flaws that were made for aesthetics (the antenna that failed when you grabbed it, the 6+'s bending too easily, etc).
They are all about making shiny, fashionable, devices and charging a massive premium for them. That's fine, I guess, if that's what you like, but don't try and sell it as something amazing.
Same deal with physical evidence. As an individual, you generally have no records retention requirements. You are welcome to destroy your stuff as pleases you. So you can shred bills, old receipts, etc as soon as you want. None of this is destruction of evidence if you get sued. When it changes is if you get sued, and you are told to keep things, and you then destroy it. Then you are in trouble. So if a court case happens, the court can, and will, say "You need to keep anything related to this around in case we want to see it." But just in your everyday life you can wipe drives, shred documents, etc as you please.
This can be a little difference if we are talking something related to a business, there are more records retention requirements for various businesses, but again it has to be something where there is a legal requirement to retain it.
The only other case would be if something goes against policy. If a business has a policy that all old harddrives are kept in storage for 10 years before being destroyed, that's not legally required but they can do it anyhow. However if a lawsuit happens and the one harddrive that was asked for just so happened to be sent off to be destroyed immediately, against the business' own policy, well then that could be trouble.
You don't have to retain everything for all time just in case someone wants it for a lawsuit. However if you have something, and a court says it is evidence, you then have to retain it until the court is done with it.
If it is actually "close to the core" like AMD claims, then it is something that'll only work on their GCN hardware, and when they change that, it'll stop working. Realistically they are probably lying and it is just another API, particularly since game performance has been very mixed, being only slightly faster at best and slower occasionally.
If you bench one of the few games that do both DX and GL on Windows (like Earth 2150 or something) you find that the program will run at equal speeds on nVidia drivers. nVidia has declared both DX and GL to be native APIs and they both have first flight support. Then you try it on AMD an you find GL running slower. This is never mind feature issues, crashing or anything else.
AMD just doesn't do well for OpenGL. I dunno why they haven't fixed it, but it is a real issue. Most gamers don't care since not a lot of games use OpenGL on Windows, but it is a real issue. Of course for an OS that uses OpenGL as its only 3D API, it'll be a big issue.
An open source project can have as few as just one set. There are some projects that nobody other than the developer ever contributes to. Just one guy occasionally working on some little project that some people use. Those all those people COULD look at the code, they don't.
Likewise commercial firms can, and sometimes do, pay many people to look at the code. In addition to having a big development staff they can have dedicated QA staffs. They can have a person, or many people, who's job it is literally to sit and look over the code for security issues every single day.
You are buying in to the same fallacy that the article is talking about: That because something is open is just means that more people MUST be looking at it. No it means people can look at it, but they may choose not to.
PCs usually get at least some use for more "necessary" things. Financial stuff is frequently done on a computer, a lot of renewal/registration type of things are done on a computer. Sending e-mail is usually done on a computer (much easier with a keyboard than a tablet), etc. Then of course there are people who use them for work. You can argue if it is a good idea or not, but many people use computers to do some work from home.
One can get by without a computer in the home, but it is becoming more difficult. You end up having to go more out of your way to do various daily things that have moved to the Internet. Now none of this is difficult, it doesn't require a high end system, but having a computer does make it much easier.
A tablet works as a replacement for most things, of course, but that doesn't mean it is as easy. Content creation, even simple things like e-mail, is much more laborious on a tablet than on a computer. Also most people already have computers, and usually smartphones which can do everything a tablet can.
Hence tablets really end up slotting in to the toy category for most. If you went all utilitarian about it, just a smartphone would probably be all they needed, but we aren't a country of utilitarianism, but of convenience. So they have a computer (maybe more than one) a smartphone, and then get a tablet too.
I mean some people have a genuine need/use for a tablet however for most it is just a toy. They don't get it to replace a desktop and/or laptop, idiot tech journalist stories to the contrary, they get it in addition. It gets used for playing around, surfing the web on the couch, watching Netflix in bed, etc. It is just a toy. Nothing wrong with that, toys are fun, I have a tablet just for use as a toy. However that also makes it something not high up on the upgrade list. If all you are doing is some basic noodling around and nothing on it is important, then it isn't a big target to upgrade.